It has been more than two weeks since Vice President Kamala Harris emerged as the Democratic nominee. And during that time, she has not granted any interviews or held press conferences, setting a new precedent for candidate access to the press in an unprecedented election cycle.
Harris has had a honeymoon period of sorts. The legacy media has showered her candidacy with glowing coverage from immediate comparisons of Barack Obama’s political rise to reframing her word salads as meme royalty. She has tightened polls against former President Trump. And the honeymoon will likely continue with the selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as running mate and the upcoming DNC convention, where candidates historically receive a bump in the polls.
Perhaps most significantly, she has avoided scrutiny.
The opposite had happened to her ex-running mate, President Biden, particularly in the days leading up to his exit from the race. Following his disastrous debate performance, the legacy media began scrutinizing the White House over Biden’s health, his polling took a hit and Democrats launched an intense, unprecedented pressure campaign to remove him from the top of the ticket.
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Stunningly, Biden was quicker to grant an interview during a terrible news cycle than Harris has in the much more favorable news cycle she is currently experiencing, speaking with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos eight days after his frail debate showing that scrambled the 2024 race. Subsequent interviews and rallies didn’t undo the damage, and he dropped out of the race on July 21.
Even Harris was far more accessible to the media in the aftermath of Biden’s debate, making appearances on MSNBC, CNN and ABC to push the “bad night” narrative.
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Both Harris and Trump have been on the campaign stump during their newly-formed match-up, but only Trump has been doing interviews, most notably at the National Association of Black Journalists’ annual conference in Chicago where he sparred with the panelists. Harris didn’t attend.
Instead, the media has heard from a plethora of high-profile Harris supporters. One of her top surrogates, Transportation Secretary and former VP contender Pete Buttigieg, has done at least 10 interviews hyping her candidacy and attacking the Trump-Vance ticket over the two weeks since Harris became the presumptive nominee.
Republican vice presidential pick JD Vance, who hopes to become the next vice president himself, specifically called out Harris as having a “basement strategy” on Tuesday and urged reporters to hold her more accountable.
“This is a person who has been a presumptive Democrat nominee for 16 days. She hasn’t taken a single real question from a reporter,” he said. “The American people deserve to get to know the people who want to lead them, and I think it’s shameful for Kamala Harris, but increasingly for the media, that she is taking a basement strategy of running from reporters instead of getting in front of them and answering tough questions about her record and letting the American people know who she is.”
Why take the risk?
In the 17 days since she launched her campaign, Harris has not faced any questions about her knowledge of Biden’s mental decline, how she would handle the ongoing escalation in the Middle East, the growing concerns of a recession, her record as “border czar,” the revelations surrounding Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff’s extramarital affair during his first marriage, and the myriad far-left positions she embraced during her 2020 presidential bid, several of which her campaign has quietly tried addressing through reversal statements to the press.
“As long as she is getting so much favorable press coverage, there is no need for her to take the risks associated with doing unscripted press interactions,” DePauw University journalism professor Jeffrey McCall told Fox News Digital. “Harris has shown repeatedly over her political career that she’s just not very good at speaking in extemporaneous situations. She is known for her word salads and unserious style.”
“After all, Biden ran an unaccountable basement campaign in 2020, the media went along with it, and he got elected,” he added.
Perhaps her team has concluded the risk of doing interviews is too high. Many point to her damning 2021 exchange with NBC’s Lester Holt when she famously said, “And I haven’t been to Europe,” as she was pressed about not visiting the southern border after being appointed by Biden to address the root causes of the migrant crisis.
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Last week, she raised eyebrows while speaking on the tarmac following the emotional return of Evan Gershkovich, Paul Whelan and Alsu Kurmasheva, three Americans freed from Russia as part of a historic prisoner swap.
“This is just extraordinary testament to the importance of having a president who understands the power of diplomacy, and understands the strength that rests in understanding the significance of diplomacy and strengthening alliances,” Harris said in the unscripted moment.
‘Do better’
The calls from news organizations for Harris to take their questions are few and far between.
The New York Times editorial board urged Harris to “do better” than Biden in engaging with reporters, something Biden scarcely did in comparison to his predecessors.
“President Biden has rarely granted the news media permission to ask questions on behalf of the American people, and on the rare occasions he did, his team sometimes sent scripted questions. It left him poorly prepared for the campaign trail and for confronting his opponent. Mr. Trump, too, rarely takes questions. Ms. Harris has the chance to do better,” the Times editorial board wrote last month.
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But beyond the Times’ tepid plea, there has been almost no demand by the media for Harris to speak to journalists. Versus Media podcast host Stephen L. Miller suspected it’s because no journalist “wants to be the one seen by their colleagues” as ultimately helping Trump win the election by creating the media event where Harris falters under pressure.
“This is their atonement for what they see were mistakes they made in 2016 with Hillary Clinton and her emails,” Miller told Fox News Digital.
On Tuesday, Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer suggested other media outlets need to cover Harris’ refusal to answer questions.
“We can’t be the only media company that talks about it,” Hemmer said on “America’s Newsroom.”
“Sixteen days she has gone without a significant interview,” Hemmer continued. “I mean, is it possible that she runs the clock until Chicago? That’d be extraordinary. And then you’d have to ask yourself, ‘What are you hiding? And what’s your team hiding from?’”
However, not everyone thinks Harris needs to grant interviews. At least not now.
“Voters want to pick a winner, and Kamala Harris most looks like a winner when she draws thousands at a rally, not when she’s having an interview with Lester Holt,” said Democratic strategist Christopher Hale.
Hale, who is spearheading “Catholics for Kamala,” told Fox News Digital there hasn’t been a political setback for her to avoid interviews, pointing to her rising favorability since her campaign launch.
“The only way it’ll hurt her is if the press corps start writing about how she isn’t doing an interview. It would need to seep into public consciousness that she’s avoiding a sit down,” Hale said. “What she’s doing now is working, so I would keep doing it until it doesn’t.”
The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
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